In the Trenches with Hearts and Minds: DevOps as “Settled Science” or Largely an Uncontrolled Experiment?

Spring 2021

This session moves deeper into the actual operational experience of DevOps practitioners in the field. Four seasoned professionals will review how various DevOps practices play out in the real world. They’ll examine such notions as creating a single repository of truth, reducing batch sizes, keeping team sizes small, increasing feedback loops, building infrastructure in code, shifting left, continuously testing, and on to automation. At this juncture, is DevOps really as scientific a set of practices as its proponents claim? Or is it something else? Are the metrics produced in the annual “State of DevOps Report” to be taken at face value? Ultimately, what is the “winning combination” of practices that ensures DevOps success from the perspective of those who do this work every day?

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Speakers:

Michael Thomas Clark

Michael is a veteran technologist with over 30 years’ experience in large enterprise computing. He began his career as a network and server engineer at Bausch & Lomb in the early days of distributed computing before moving on to Fidelity Investments and progressively larger systems management roles. He finished up his time at Fidelity in Enterprise Architecture, where he focused on various platform infrastructure initiatives, including leading the effort to develop a unified compute platform strategy for the firm.

Michael has spent the last decade engaged in an array of global professional services activities, working with private-equity acquisitions and startups in healthcare and network security. In 2017, he became a Core Organizer for DevOpsDays Boston and co-founded the “Boston DevOps Network, Inc,” a non-profit aimed at promoting DevOps learning and community-building in the Greater Boston area. Since 2015, Michael has worked with what is now the ONUG Cloud Native Security Working Group, where he is currently co-Chair with Forrest Bennett of FedEx. Michael also serves as co-Chair with Verica’s James Wickett for ONUG’s “DevSecOps @ONUG Spring ‘22” program initiative.

Don Luchini

Don Luchini is a Boston-based DevOps engineer specializing in infrastructure management and deployment automation pipelines. Over the past ten years, he has acted in the corporate IT, quality assurance, software development, and release engineering spaces, encompassing a number of roles that now fall under the term DevOps. He currently works at SimpliSafe, a Boston-based manufacturer of connected home security systems. In his spare time, he is a martial artist, radio enthusiast, and hobby photographer.

Michael D’Aniello

Cody Rae Lazri

Cody is a DevOps-Engineer-recently-turned-IT-Project-Manager, nonbinary activist, compulsive event planner, and Organizational Development nerd. Xe is working on a grant-funded project to implement optional pronoun entry into IAM systems at Harvard. Xe weaves accessibility and inclusion into all of xyr work, technical or otherwise.